“Microsoft Corp kept its personal computer partners largely in the dark about its plans to launch a competing tablet computer, with some long-time collaborators learning of the new gadget only days before its unveiling, according to people with knowledge of the matter,” Poornima Gupta and Lee Chyen Yee report for Reuters.
“The secrecy that shrouded the Surface tablet risks alienating Microsoft’s hardware partners, and marks a departure from the software company’s tradition of working closely with hardware companies to test and fine-tune every new product,” Gupta and Yee report. “It also underscores how Microsoft is starting to take pages from Apple Inc’s playbook…”
MacDailyNews Take: Starting? Are they forking kidding? Reuters’ amnestic duo should investigate what Microsoft has been doing for the last 25+ years. “Starting.” Sheesh.
“The earliest that Microsoft’s personal computing partners were told about the tablet was last Friday, just three days before it was shown to the media at an event in Los Angeles, according to sources in the U.S. and Taiwan technology industry who spoke on condition of anonymity,” Gupta and Yee report. “Windows chief Steven Sinofsky made a round of telephone calls but gave only the barest details on Friday, neither revealing the name of the gadget nor its specifications, two people close to Microsoft’s partners told Reuters.”
Gupta and Yee report, “That some of Microsoft’s partners were not told beforehand about the Surface has led to a ‘sense of betrayal’ in the industry, according to one source. ‘This has always been a point of contention between OEMs and Microsoft — Microsoft getting into the hardware space,’ a second source said… Analysts pointed to similar concerns in the Android smartphone world surrounding Google Inc’s decision to buy Motorola… Driving Microsoft’s shift, say analysts, is the growing clout of Apple, whose iPad is threatening the market for notebook computers.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Dear crappy Windows PC assemblers, you’ve just been PlayedForSure™. Thank you so much for your work in helping to consign the world to The Dark Age of Personal Computing just recently obliterated by Steve Jobs and Apple Inc. Your contributions to stagnation and frustration were immeasurable. Your ability to negatively impact productivity was unmatched. Good luck in your future endeavors and don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way to bankruptcy court, suckers!
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Dvorak: Windows 8 an unmitigated disaster; unusable and annoying; it makes your teeth itch – June 3, 2012
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